Tara Brach - Meditation: Loving Kindness - Awakening and Expressing Our Heart (retreat)

Episode Date: November 1, 2018

Meditation: Loving Kindness - Awakening and Expressing Our Heart - This short talk and guided meditation remind us that we each have the capacity to awaken our hearts. We explore together the lovingkindness (metta) meditation, and emphasize holding our own being and dear ones with a tender, open and loving presence (from the IMCW 2018 Fall Silent Retreat). Free download of Tara's 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. Buddhism, the metaphor of the two wings of the bird, really is one of the most meaningful to me because the wings are love and understanding, or you might say, mindfulness and compassion. And the understanding is that we have to have both

to fly and be free, that we really can't be present unless there's some quality, some spaciousness to the heart. And so although we introduce particular practices in this one period in the afternoon, they're really offered in the spirit of please weave them into your full experience however you see fit. Okay, so there's a story. And if you'd like to open your eyes, I'm going to be speaking for a little bit, and then we're going to practice, and if there's time, then maybe have a few questions. One story, one morning Sam wakes up with a start, and her partner asks her, what's the matter?

And she says, I just had a dream that you gave me a pearl necklace for Valentine's Day. What do you think it means? You'll know tonight, Tony said. In that evening, Tony comes home with a small package and gives it to her and delighted Sam opens it, only to find the book entitled The Meaning of Dreams. So we have these ideas about love and how we give love and what it means

the way people behave. And really these practices are very radical ones to cut through all our stories and how do we have that actual experience of our hearts getting tender? There are different ways our hearts get tender and the way sometimes it's divided up and you'll probably get practices

in each of these modalities, the tenderness that's love is when we sense the goodness and feel that fullness that really has that well-wishing and appreciation. And the tenderness of compassion is when we encounter suffering and our heart wants to help. And then there's really that tenderness of joy when our heart is the vastness of the heart that includes all the joys and sorrows, so to speak,

and there's just this incredible dynamic openness and presence. And there's forgiveness, which has a lot of the compassion elements where there's immediately some block to our hearts that we're opening around and tenderizing around. So I think through the week you'll get these different flavors. And so we often begin with loving kindness or metta, that openness of love, that sense of the goodness. And one of the key words in Pali that I think is fabulous for META. is just friendliness. And I sometimes think right here in this group, if, what would it be like if we truly believed

or felt that we are friends, that really we are friends? Just a sense that really this whole field is made of friends and that we have that well-wishing for each other. and just a sense to stealth meta flying around and that there really is, even when we feel cut off, there's that wanting for that to be participating in that friendliness. And just a sense how if we really could trust that, that friendliness, we'd be free to be real. And so much of our lack of spontaneity and authenticity is that we just don't trust we're going to be received well. We're afraid of being judged.

So it's friendly with each other, that real open-hearted accepting inclusivity of each other. It's friendliness with ourselves, which is, of course, a primary domain of META because that same mistrust and fear that others are going to judge us, most of us are at war with ourselves to some degree. So META undoes that. Meta is that part of us that's saying I'm holding you no matter what you're going through I love you

there's a sense that meta or loving kindness is really the juice of the path and one story of Bektashi dervish who is really respected for his piety and holiness and appearance of virtue

beautiful Sufi master and you'd hold forth at a coffee house. And when anybody asked him, well, how, you know, how he becomes so holy, his response was, well, I know what is in the Quran. That was his response. So one day he had, a new person was at the coffee house and asked the question. When he gave that response, the guy kind of, he was a little bit of an upstart, he goes, okay, what's in the Quran, you know? And the response was, in the Quran, there are two pressed flowers and a letter from my friend Abdullah. Friendliness, friendship, it's the center of the path. It's the expression of the path. So to look a little closer at the meta practice, any way of paying attention that opens your

heart is a meta practice. It's misleading to think that a certain practice that just came through one country and was fashioned and shaped by a small number of people is just the That's the meta. It's not just handing ourselves and others in a sequence a set of phrases. There's more possibilities and phrases are incredibly powerful. Meta can be a way of, you can reflect on words, images, activity. You can imagine a certain activity going on and that can wake up the heart, touch. I know one story, a man who was frightened asked the Dalai Lama for a meditation and the Dalai Lama said, imagine that you're being held in the heart of the Buddha.

And that was his visualization. He just imagined his glowing heart and that he was resting in it. Many different styles. It's a way of gladdening the mind. And if we think in evolutionary terms, because it's such an intelligent practice, practice, we all have that survival negativity bias that has us filter for what's wrong, you know, what's wrong with another person and what's wrong with us. Our self-judgment comes from the survival bias.

And meta is intentionally undertaking meta is a systematic way to undo that. And it needs to be done in a way that is very embodied because NERA neuroscience has shown that for us to shift that aversive feeling and develop a real trait of loving presence, loving kindness. We need to evoke it and then sustain it and feel it embodied for 15 to 30 seconds plus, but really sustain it because all of our experiences that really keep on calling our attention are ones that have gone into our implicit memory, and often that's the stuff that has to do with separation, hurt, pain, suffering. So to have a good experience, if you do a metta practice

and you feel yourself really in communion with others and that warmth and that tenderness to sustain it and feel it in your body for a certain amount of time, it drops into the implicit memory. It's more available. There's a reason I'm talking in this kind of technical way. And the reason is that when we become more intentional about the metta practice, it has a powerful effect on our psyche. But it takes intentionality because we have so many habits of not being in our body are just cruising right by the experiences that most can wake up our hearts. A couple of other pointers about it, it's not a cover-up of difficult emotions.

If something's difficult, that's a time, if we can, to bring all the kindness and presence in the world to what's difficult not to get into some route way of trying to funnel through our brain positive thinking. And it's okay if meta is mechanical. There are times that your biochemistry and mind state is not feeling loving and yet it can be useful to go through the motions. And that the if or caveat is if your intention is there. Another Dalai Lama story is that at one point he said something like,

I don't always, I don't know why people like me so much, but I think it's because I love Bodhita, you know, the awakened heart mind. He said, I can't always claim to practice it, but I love it. And that's such a teaching to me. It's like we can't always care, but we can care about caring. Does that make sense? That's intention, that you care about waking up your heart, so that you go ahead and be mechanical because there's some behind it there's that intention.

So as I said, we'll practice some. The real invitation is to experiment. You have to kind of find out what most works for your heart. Experiment. Keep it fresh. Maybe I'll share one of my favorite meta stories and then we'll practice. And this is a meta story written by Naomi Shaiyb Nyeh, who's a Palestinian poet, writer, and one of my favorites. If you want, you can close your eyes and just listen.

The title is Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal. After learning my flight was delayed four hours, I heard the announcement. If anyone in the vicinity of Gate 4A understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately. Well, one pauses these days. Gate 4A was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor wailing loudly. Help the flight person said, talk to her, what's her problem? We told her the flight was going to be delayed, and she did this. I put my arm around her and spoke haltingly.

Shudda, Ashu, Biduk, Abiti, Stani, Stani, Shuei, Midfili. The minute she heard any word she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought our flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Pasover, some major medical treatment the following day. I said, no, no, we're fine. You'll get there just late. Who's picking you up? Let's call him and tell him. We called her son, and I spoke with him in English. Told him I'd stay with his mother till we got in the point.

plane and would ride next to her southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out they of course had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it, why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her. This took up to about two hours. She was laughing a lot by then telling about her life, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade Mamal cookies, little powdered sugar crumbling mounds stuffed with eats and nuts out of her bag, and was offering them to all the people at the gate.

To my amazement, not one declined one. It was like a sacrament, the traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California, from Lareda. We were all covered with the same powdered sugar and smiling. There are no better cookies. And then the airline broke out free beverages from huge coolers, non-alcoholic, two little girls for our flight. one African-American, one Mexican-American, ran around serving us all apple juice and lemonade, and they were covered in powdered sugar too.

And I noticed my new best friend, by now we were holding hands, had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing with green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere. And I looked around that gait of late and weary ones and thought,

this is the world I want to live in, the shared world. Not a single person in this gate, once the crying of confusion stopped, has seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those others too. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost. So we practice this friendliness for the freedom of our hearts

and also for the rippling out to create a more friendly and loving world. Okay, if you'd like to in some way adjust how you're sitting, please feel free. You might let your attention come into the area of the heart and feel your breath at the heart, inviting yourself right here to this moment, this heart space. You might sense your intention for awakening your heart. We begin by bringing to mind someone who's very easy to love, someone who we trust and feel loves us and is on our team. Sometimes this is called a benefactor, a person we just feel grateful for it that might

be very close in or some we know not so well but that we really feel trust and love with. and bring the image and sense of this person close in. So you can sense this person's eyes as they look at you, how they look when they're looking lovingly. And the felt sense of what you share, what you appreciate, letting yourself notice whatever goodness about them comes up, whatever you sense is their goodness, and most deeply how they touch your heart, help your heart.

You might mentally whisper, thank you. You might mentally whisper their name and I love you. Imagine and sense them receiving that, receiving your appreciation and love and just deepening that sense of connection. Notice how that feels just the warmth and tenderness, however it feels in your heart. Feeling that heart space, that feels that starts waking up as you sense. that benefactor and bringing your attention to this being right here, yourself, this embodied being regarding yourself, looking through that lens of care and love to see your own being

and sense your own goodness, that you want to love, that you love, that you love. whatever qualities your being you appreciate, your honesty, humor, appreciation of beauty. And if it helps looking through the eyes of the one who loves you, adding that dimension. Offering yourself well-wishing and you might gently put your hand on your heart. So you're really communicating from your big heart right to this human heart with this much sincerity. as you can. Some like to put their hand on their cheek or both hands on their heart, however you feel intimate with your own being. Experiment and if you haven't done this really experiment, sensing what you want to wish for yourself. I'll just say some phrases that many find are

resonant and as you mentally whisper them it helps to imagine yourself with the the qualities you're wishing for yourself visually and to feel it in your body, the possibility. May I be held in loving presence, filled with loving presence. May I feel happy. May I know true well-being. May I touch great and natural peace. May my heart and mind awaken. May I be free.

Feeling your sincerity, really offering care to your sense. through the words. May I be held in loving presence, filled with loving presence. May I feel happy. Know the natural joy of well-being. May I touch natural and great peace. May this heart and mind awaken and be free. In the silence sense,

what blessing or prayer you're being most, wants to or needs to hear again and again, offering the words, bringing the image, the felt sense, feeling your own awakening heart, offering care inwardly. If you find it difficult to offer care to yourself, you can imagine and visualize your benefactor and the heart, the awakened heart of your benefactor, as really a channel of of loving, to sense if your hands are touching your heart that that loving is flowing from that universal heart that your benefactors plugged into right into, flowing into and just bathing you with love and widening the field now, offering blessings we bring into this heart space,

again, that sense of our benefactor just as I want to be filled with loving present. May you too be filled with loving presence. Imagine it, visualize it. Just as I want to be happy, may you be happy. Just as I want to touch natural peace. May you touch natural peace. And just as I want to awaken and be free. May you awaken and be free.

Including in this heart space someone else who's dear to you may be a little more complicated complicated relationship, somebody that could use your loving energy, bringing someone else in and sensing that being's goodness, that look in their eyes when they're feeling loved or loving, feeling happy. And in the silence takes some moments to offer your metta, your prayers. Bringing to mind someone who's here, somebody you know or someone you don't know, someone I know you've taken in enough, you've looked at enough that you can kind of sense their beingness, just to tune and feel and sense the goodness of that being.

Offering your prayers. Feeling the heart space that includes yourself, benefactor, dear one, someone in this field of friends, and sensing the heart space that includes us all, all of us here. You feel your prayers for all of us. for our peace and happiness and awakening. I'm feeling our shared heart space that's edgeless. It's all-inclusive. All the beings that have been on this land in the past

and walk this land now or fly or swim. All the beings everywhere on this earth and beyond. It's that heart space that holds us all. In the radiant sutras, there's a place in the heart. where everything meets. Go there if you want to find me. Mind, senses, soul, eternity, all are there. Are you there? Enter the bowl of vastness that is the heart. Give yourself to it with total abandon. Quiet ecstasy is there in a steady, regal sense of resting in a perfect spot. Once you know the way,

the nature of attention will call you to return again and again and be saturated with knowing, I belong here, I am at home here. Once you know the way, the nature of attention will call you to return again and again and be saturated with knowing, I belong here, I am at home here. In silence now, just resting.

and the awareness of heart. I do want to invite you to explore the weave of loving kindness practice and the others into everything. And you can, it doesn't have to be long. You might just start a sitting by gladdening the mind, just a very brief offering of a blessing to yourself to others. You can end a practice that way or anywhere in the midst if you feel like you need to kind of in some way, refresh and open the heart, you can pause and bring that energy

in intentionally. So, enjoy and thank you.